September 2019

Two weeks ago saw the inaugural meeting of the Tower Hamlets Oracy Hub. Our aim this year is to create a community of teachers across the borough to share practice and raise the profile of oracy education in schools.

We began with an inspiring day of training from Voice 21, exploring how to create a culture of talk in the classroom. In the morning we looked into raising the profile of spoken language through classroom discussion guidelines and scaffolds for talk. We practised using the Harkness Method and having discussions in different formats, including in trios and a traverse.

The afternoon session delved deeper into the benchmarks of successful oracy teaching, as well as analysing the Oracy Framework, a resource that breaks down the tenets of high quality spoken language skills into four areas: Linguistic, cognitive, social & emotional and physical.

So much to now take back to our classrooms and experiment with over the coming weeks.

In November, we will all be visiting Cubitt Town Junior School to observe what oracy looks like in a school that has spent a year working oracy into all aspects of their curriculum.  The hub will then reconvene later in November and share our successes after a term of attempting to bring more talk into class.

What an exciting year we have ahead; schools and teachers working together to help the children of Tower Hamlets find their voice!

Nicky Pear
Assistant Headtecher
Cubitt Town Junior School